Safety in automated driving (ADS): modelling interaction between road-users and automated vehicles

Research Project, 2018 – 2019

Background: Automated driving promises safer roads; however, the interaction between automated vehicles and people poses significant safety challenges, especially in a mixed environment where not all vehicles are fully automated. These issues have a strong human factors component, although rooted in the engineering of automated vehicles. This project focused on high-risk scenarios which are particularly important to automated driving and have not been the main target for road-user modelling so far.
The purpose of this project is to contribute to sustainable transport by promoting automated vehicle safety, leveraging on an interdisciplinary network of national and international world-leading researchers, and focusing on modelling the interaction between autonomous vehicles and people.
The objectives of this project are to:
• [Research] – develop quantitative models of road-user behavior in relation to high-risk situations in automated-driving.
• [Collaboration] – collaborate with key international (UMTRI, MIT, and U. of Wisconsin) and national (GU and Chalmers, M2, E2, and CSE) researchers.
• [Education] – enable knowledge transfer to Master courses and Master’s theses at Chalmers and GU, which is one of the main prerequisites for SOT funding at GU.
• [Utilization] – offer open-innovation to society in the form of open-source code, analysis procedures, and GUIs for human factor engineering analyses. Promote dissemination of results from automated driving research at Chalmers, though seminars from international guests.
• [Publications] – co-author papers on high-impact journal with world leading researchers.